Jobs & Housing

With the announcement that General Electric will be moving over a thousand jobs to the Cincinnati area, a question looms, where will the employees live? Mason, Oakley & The Banks are supposed to be the short list for the office with a temporary office planned for downtown in the short term. People are pretty comfy commuting for miles, so no matter where the final office is located, anywhere in the region is a viable place for these new workers to call home. If The Banks is the final decision, the new housing coming online in the downtown area will be very attractive for people who don't want to commute long distances. It is also the destination of area highways. Mason & Oakley would probably find most employees living on the east side.
The question is - where will realty agents direct these new residents?
I had a relative who was relocated. The business provided realty services but the agents only knew the sprawly suburban areas so when said relative asked to look at old farmhouses the agent drew a blank.
I don't know how this could be done but I would say neighborhoods need to promote themselves to either GE or to the agency they choose to provide real estate services.
Whatever, the city government will not be the answer.

PS - the relative did find a nice little 1790-1800 farm house with a barn.

'Warp article here

And another perspective from Victorian Antiquities & Design

Roxanne Qualls - Building Stronger Neighborhoods

Cincinnati Mayoral Candidate, Roxanne Qualls, rolls out Come Home Cincinnati in an effort to rehab and re-occupy abandoned homes in Cincinnati's neighborhoods. Vacant houses in Cincinnati's older neighborhoods create a nuisance and blight the neighborhoods. The city is littered with these houses since the housing financial meltdown. Qualls' plan should help to re-energize these neighborhoods, raise property values & attract new residents to the community.

More info here

The Power of VictimhoodIn a recent Fiswarp article by "Local Expert" Dan Hurley, the author issued some thoughts about stabilising & re-invigorating Cincinnati's neighborhoods. He said:

First, will upwardly mobile newcomers to Over-the-Rhine find creative ways to live with, not just beside, the poor who have lived there for more than a century?
Second, can West Side neighborhoods quit bemoaning the influx of displaced African-Americans and build mixed-income, mixed-race neighborhoods?
If successful, they can provide an instructive model for residents of Hyde Park, Avondale and all of us that diverse, inclusive communities are more interesting, exciting and culturally richer places to live than what existed in the past.

But did the westies appreciate him suggesting they take a leadership role in the city?
Not on your life!
Instead they just wailed & moaned and did everything Hurley had mentioned was their current unsuccessful MO. They ain't changing a thing, just wallowing in their own self pity.

The whole story here

Fannie & Freddie Fuck Us Again
After Clinton killed Glass-Steagall, we had an 8 year perfect storm of Republicans fighting finance regulations, Democrats promoting schemes to get home loans into the hands of the "poor & disenfranchised", traders getting involved with mortgages & investments and Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac buying as many shitty loans as possible knowing they would never be held accountable if the whole thing went belly up - the shit hit the fan.
Now cities across America, like Cincinnati, are saddled with a huge number of abandoned vacant houses that blight neighborhoods, invite crime & pests and lower nearby property values.
The cities can't afford to maintain the homes, neighbors can't legally maintain them (they'd be trespassing) and the banks who have evicted the owners who defaulted on their loans won't take care of them even though they're flush with taxpayer money.
Cities have passed laws requiring the banks to maintain the properties they claim (when convenient). Now the fattest whores at the party, Fannie & Freddie are suing Chicago in a test case to see if they can squirm out of such laws. If they prevail in Chicago, towns like Cincinnati will follow & banks like Wells Fargo & Deutsche Bank will follow Fannie's & Freddie's precedent.
Maybe we can issue them licenses to kill, too.

NPR story here

Fishwarp story talking about the problem back when it started here

Economic Indicators
In this day and age I have no idea why housing starts are any indicator of the economy. Heck, it's wild home buying promotions that got us in the pickle we're in today. I understand why housing starts got their clout after WWII but the population growth is sputtering out & a lot of those houses built in the second half of the 20th century were built to last. New housing for some time now should be growing at a pace rivaling M$oft's OS glacial pace of growth. That is - the market is saturated
ScienceFiction.com reports comic book sales had their best January since 2008. Dunno if this should be any kind of economic bellwether - it might just be some kind of ouroboric film / comic book entertainment cycle. Seems as good as using housing to gauge the economy, tho. I mean, what's a house but a place to keep your comic books?

The Road to Hell
My name is Chris and I'll be your driver

In the latest episode of the Sillyman Hour on Time Warner Local Access Cable, Smitherman wanders a residential area of Avondale bemoaning all the vacant abandoned housing. Besides breaking into the Mr Rogers theme repeatedly he tries linking the blight to a proposed health clinic (shot down by Smitherman's Republican comrades) and the proposed streetcar.
I agree that the buildings need to be occupied & so does the city. The city's law department has been vexed with banks like Wells-Fargo & Deutsche Bank and their cavalier handling of their properties.
Smitherman has a plan, tho, and as he repeatedly states, "It's not rocket science". The city should use eminent domain to seize the properties and then sell them to responsible people for $1 each.
He doesn't mention that the government is required to compensate property owners a fair value for their properties & that the process is long and costly. He also ignores the fact that his plan is unconstitutional. Remember the (other) Gamble House that did get saved in Norwood? You can't use eminent domain to transfer property from one owner to another.
The city can, however, use infrastructure to make places more convenient to live in. That's the core of the streetcar plan that Smitherman so despises as bringing in new residents is characterized as gentrification. Wouldn't that be the result of his unconstitutional plan for Avondale? Or maybe the issue is the right people.